Monday, August 23, 2010

button bobby pins

Inspired by the fellow farmer's market vendor who made these flower hairpins (she also made some with antique button on them), I embarked on a simple and fun project last week.

I looked through my collection of antique and vintage buttons and picked out some of the prettiest.

Then I gave them a good bath in warm water and mild soap. For some reason my great-grandma stored a tiny sample tin of moisturizing (greasy) hand salve with her buttons. It was in a cute little tin , but over time some of the contents leaked out and combined with dust to make an icky coating on the buttons.

Then I attached the buttons to bobby pins with a few stitches and secured them with super glue. And voila! I have an assortment pretty bobby pins for pinning back my bangs during the 25-50% of the time I don't like them. I love the vintage button pins. I thought about giving some of them away, but I'm not sure if I actually will...

Update: Please note that using the dab of super glue that I recommend will make your button and bobby pin inseparable friends for life. One commenter suggests using hot glue instead, which would probably yield more temporary results. I have an unreasonable aversion to hot glue, so I'd rather use super glue, but you might not, so there you have it. : )

These are gorgeous. The buttons are also especially unique. I just wanted to let you know that I am featuring this on a button-themed craft post at Lines Across My Face.:) Rachelhttp://linesacrossmyface.blogspot.com/2011/08/cute-as-button-amazing-button-crafts.html

Both my grandmothers had a jar of buttons for us kids to play with when we visited. I bought an old blue mason jar full of buttons at an antique store. I can't wait to go thru them and "borrow" your idea to make hair pins for my granddaughters. Awesome ideas!

hi there, i found your adorable project via pinterest and shared a link to them on my blog - http://mindingmynest.com/2012/01/52-weeks-of-pinspiration-week-2button-bobbie-pins/. I made some for my nieces birthday and they turned out so cute. :) thanks for the pinspiration!! love, kelly

I'm so glad I found this! I made some today, and they are so cute! Way better than the plain ol' bobby pin! I can never get myself to spend money on the expensive store ones though. My mom keeps every single button with every single jacket, sweater, coat, ect so I've been going through and finding all the buttons that we no longer have the clothes for. That way it doesn't matter if the bobby pin gets lost!

These are SO cute! I would probably use E6000 instead of superglue as it is less brittle and bonds better. Kind of the best of support glue and a glue gun. I use it for everything and it had never let me down. I do have some Bobby pins which have a pass at the end to glue things on to, but plain bobby pins are MUCH cheaper! Thanks again for sharing, I found this link on pinterest......Fran